College Experimentation
by seriousish
Summary: AU. Beckett gives Alexis far more help with her college dissertation than Alex counted on.
1. Chapter 1

Having Kate Beckett walk into the hotel room was like stepping back in time. Alexis could've been studying for her SATs again. She could've been into _Twilight _again.

Funny how she remembered Kate as a swaggering, domineering badass in a motorcycle jacket. Beckett came in light and springy as a summer day, wearing a light-toned pantsuit with a purple silk blouse underneath, hair flowing straight down her back. "Alexis! God, _you've _grown! You have a growth spurt in the last week?"

"Just started wearing high heels." Alexis returned the hug Kate greeted her with.

"Your dad buys you high heels?" Kate clapped Alexis on the back as she broke away. Her smile was condescending. "How's college?"

"Traumatic. Just like the last three years."

"Try doing it with student loans to look forward to." Kate took off her jacket and hung it on the door.

"You want coffee?" Alexis marched off the landing of her hotel room like she was giving Kate the slip.

"Oh my God!" Kate exclaimed, clearly meaning she was surprised that Alexis didn't drink juice boxes.

"Stop! I get enough of that from my dad. If I didn't have an Amazon wishlist, he'd still give me Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures for Christmas."

As she went in the kitchen to get the snack tray she'd prepared, Alexis quickly checked her reflection in the metallic refrigerator. Charcoal-gray blazer, pale blue Oxford shirt with the buttons undone just enough to be womanly, Capri pants, and uber-comfy Skechers. She looked becomingly professional. Perfect.

Alexis went back into the main room to find Kate sitting by the window, one leg folded over the other, looking far more like a debonair playboy on a policeman's salary than Richard Castle did with all his millions.

"So," Kate nestled her hands together on her lap, "how's this work?"

Alexis took her seat across from Kate, setting the tray on the table between them. "Well, I'm not writing a book about you, just a dissertation, so it's just an interview, not… five years of being besties."

"Rick told you about our BFF necklaces?" Kate gasped, barely sarcastic.

"You're not gonna get me." Alexis had sworn to herself that she wouldn't fall for any of Kate's jokes.

The detective played quietly coy, reaching out to open the can of Diet Pepsi Alexis had brought her.

"What's your dissertation about, _Ms. _Castle?"

"Oh, metafiction, fantasy versus reality, stories within stories—" Alexis mimed jerking off. "You wouldn't be interested."

"I don't know about that. I've always found you interesting enough."

Alexis felt like giggling under the force of Kate's fond stare. Childhood worship came rushing back to her—the kind of crush where you didn't know if you wanted to be with someone or be them, their persona was so inherent to your identity. Nowadays, Alexis knew who she was and who she wanted to be.

She wanted to be strong, like Kate.

Alexis took her forty-gig pocket recorder out, seeing it alongside the snack tray and turning it on. "Okay, we are rolling—I want this to be really informal, so don't even think about that being there." Then she took out pen and trusty notepad.

"Still an overachiever." Kate's nose scrunched with her smile.

"Sorry."

"Don't be. Mediocrity made the world the way it is. We should try to fix it."

Overeager, Alexis jotted down a note. Kate kept smiling.

"Okay. _Ms. Beckett_," Alexis teased. "First question. Do you still read the Nikki Heat books?"

Kate nodded softly, casually, and Alexis was glad she hadn't hurt her feelings. "Yes. When I have time. I have a deal with myself to wait for the paperbacks, but I break it often enough."

"And do you interact at all with the fanbase?"

"I have a Twitter account. It's good PR for the department, letting people know about charities, outreach programs—I don't mind chatting with a few shippers in exchange."

"So you're aware of the series' gay fanbase?"

Kate reached out, picked up a celery stick, pushed it into the spinach dip, and took a bite before she leaned back. "Yup."

Alexis made a note. "Did you know my—the author was going to have your character enter into a relationship with another woman?"

"Well, firstly, she's not my character, Alex. It's not like I play her in a movie. She was inspired by me, but there's a lot of things that I do that Nikki Heat doesn't do, or that she's done that—I have no idea where Castle got it from," she grinned amusedly.

"So you've never broken up an international spy ring while dressed in drag?"

"No. And there are a lot of personal aspects of my life that Castle didn't incorporate into the books because it was private. It's selling him short as a writer to think that all he did with the Nikki Heat series was follow me around and transcribe what I said. He's… very creative."

Alexis set down her pen and paper, picked up a Diet Coke. She opened it, had some trouble with the fizz, slurped it up. "Uh, you know you don't have to answer any of these? If you're not comfortable with a line of questioning or whatever—"

"Alex, your e-mail made it pretty clear what we were going to talk about. It's fine. I'm ready. I'd rather you tell people about it than some spray-tan idiot at one celebrity gossip site or another."

"Okay then." Alexis drank. "Right. So is your sexuality one of the things you share with the character of Nikki Heat?"

Alexis thought Kate's smile was a bit wry, a little wistful. "Well, sorry to say I don't get nearly as much action as she does—hard to afford all those pink martinis on a cop's salary—but I am bisexual."

"And did that inspire Nikki Heat's relationship or do you think the author came up with it on his own?"

Kate shifted in her chair. "I'm not really sure. I know Rick introduced the character of Bella St. Claire just intending her to be another kooky character, but the fans really liked the friendship between the two women—I may have mentioned that I thought she was adorable—Castle was the one who ran with it. I did have some very intense relationships with other women in my college years and at the academy, but I wasn't really relationship material in the end, you know? I'd been single for a long time when I met your dad."

"So the Nikki-Bella relationship, was it inspired by any of your relationships?"

Kate laughed. "Alex, not with a gun to my head would I tell your father anything about me and lesbian flings. No, I just corrected a few details, sent him some pointers, recommended some reading. I'm not taking credit, I was like Gandalf with Bilbo. Barely involved."

"But Gandalf did all the work."

"Alex?"

"Yeah?"

"I really wanna eat some more of those little crackers you got, but I'm gonna feel enormously guilty unless you do too, so—eat up."

They got pretty in-depth over the next two hours, walking each other through the books of 'The Bella Trilogy' as many fans now called them. Kate cackled upon being told that a lot of the femslashers didn't even bother with the books prior to Bella's introduction—the ones where Nikki was involved with a journalist named Jameson Rook. They'd split up around the same time Castle had moved to Calgary—the one timeframe Kate didn't want to discuss.

After Alexis shut the recorder off and put away her notepad, Kate grabbed some beers for them from the fridge. Alex had bought them on a hunch. They drank on the room's balcony, watching nighttime New York turn on the lights.

"Hey, Kate, can I ask you something? Off the record?"

Kate toasted her. "Here's to off the record."

Alexis took that as a yes. "Why didn't things work out with you and my dad?"

Kate shrugged less than eloquently, blowing her cheeks out. "Was never really anything to work out."

"Come on. I saw the way he looked at you. He had a bigger crush on you than I had on Liam Payne."

Kate put her beer can down on the ground and rubbed her arms for warmth. It was breezy so far off the ground. "Honestly? I did—momentarily—have a bit of a thing for him. But it was just never the right time. It never developed. And finally, we just parted ways. Ships passing in the night, I guess. Life's like that, Alex. We tell ourselves things are inevitable or fate or meant to be, but so often, all it takes is one little push—one butterfly flapping its wings—maybe in some other dimension, there's some Kate Beckett pregnant with a little baby Castle because her alarm clock didn't ring one morning or something silly like that. Or maybe in every possible universe, we cross paths and nothing happens. It's a crapshoot, Alex. All I know is, I'm happy right now, this way, and I don't know any other way I'd like to be."

"I'm glad. I never really wanted you and my dad to get together. I just wanted you to be happy. Sometimes, you seemed kinda sad. You don't anymore."

"Your dad did help me, Alex. He was a really good friend and he showed me how to enjoy life a bit more than I used to. But I can't see myself with him." Kate picked up her beer again, drank steadily. "What about you?"

"I can't see myself with my dad either. This isn't Game of Thrones."

Kate rolled her eyes. "_Have, you, _met anyone? You seemed really serious about that guy during college prep, what was his name—"

"Don't ask me, I can't remember either." Alexis ran a hand through her hair. "I have not had much time for relationships. Harvard doesn't let me get away with a lot of spare time."

"That's a shame. You don't want to work too hard, Alex."

Alexis drank. It seemed like the thing to do with the sun going down. "I'm… open to it. I put myself out there, some. I just don't go _trawling _for it like some people do. I don't think you have to. When you meet the right person, and you're the right person for them, you just sorta know. Things start happening."

"Nice theory, Alex. Not my experience." Kate checked her phone. "Anymore beers and I'll need a taxi; and if I get back now, I can show up for work in the morning with only minor sleep deprivation. Have you got enough for your dissertation?"

"It's a start."

"Well, call me if you need anything. You're way more fun to hang out with than you give yourself credit for."

"I head back on Monday. Maybe you could stop by over the weekend?" Alexis pulled out her wallet. "Here. Take my spare key. Show up anytime, I'm just going to be enjoying room service and typing my fingers off."

"I'll see if I can find time." Kate wagged the card key. "People in this town have a bad habit of getting killed and needing me to find out why."

* * *

She jinxed herself with that. The next morning, three people were found dead in Central Park, eyes gouged out, tongues painted blue, and the murder weapon apparently a medieval axe. Castle would've loved it. She ended up working all through Saturday and Sunday, finally getting a warrant just before the judge went to bed and arresting a perp deep in the AM. Thankfully, Monday was her day off. She unplugged the alarm clock and slept past noon. It was only after she'd eaten a grossly misnamed breakfast that she thought of Alexis.

She tried Alex's phone, but went to voicemail. Feeling like shit, she drove out to the hotel. Her card key still worked on the lock, so she let herself in. And found Alexis asleep at her writing desk, conked out before her laptop. Kate hadn't been the only one to pull an all-nighter.

Kate put a blanket on her and managed to cajole her into accepting a cushion under her head. In the process, she saw plane tickets back to Harvard. They were for seven o'clock. Alex didn't have long to pack. But one look at the girl and Kate couldn't bear to wake her.

So, she decided to pack for her. It was pretty easy. Alex had packed light, though like her father, she couldn't resist bringing along a barrage of little knickknacks that 'helped her write'. Kate dutifully wrapped them up for the trip back. She was just about to start on the clothes—Alexis was the only person she knew who put her clothes in the hotel cabinets on trips. Then the laptop started beeping.

Alex stirred, moaning and grumbling in her sleep while Kate hurried to her side. She grabbed up the laptop, looking for an off-switch, but who knew if Alex had saved her work? No, it was running low on power and needed to be plugged in.

Kate looked around, trying to cover up the computer's speakers. She saw an AC adapter plugged into the socket by the bed. Kate hurried to it, plugging the attached cord into the laptop. It stopped beeping, the screen happily lighting up and the little battery icon starting to fill again. Kate sighed in relief, looking over for confirmation that Alex had gone completely back to sleep.

She sat down on the bed, deciding to help Alexis out by saving her work in case of any other catastrophe. Then she saw what it was Alexis was working on.


	2. Chapter 2

Alexis woke up with the unpleasant sensation of drool on her cheek. She scrubbed at it with the outside of her hand and looked for her screensaver, only to panic when her laptop was missing. She looked around frantically; it was worse than missing. Her laptop was with Kate. Kate Beckett was on her bed. Kate Beckett was using her laptop.

"Hey!" Alexis cried, nearly tipping out of her chair. She got up on sluggish legs to snag the laptop from Kate. The detective held it out to her. "That is—that's private!" Angry as she was, she lost herself in a yawn.

"I just wanted to look over your work. I was quite a good student back in the day. Thought I'd be able to give you some pointers." Sitting on the bed, Kate's legs hung off the side. "What's Nilla, Alex?"

Alexis hugged the closed laptop to her chest. "It's what some shippers call the Nikki/Bella relationship. It's a portmanteau. Like Bennifer."

"Shippers." Kate nodded. "I've heard about them. I thought you meant people who hoped Nikki and Bella would get married. Not people who wrote the wedding night."

Alexis blanched, her face going even paler than her red hair would suggest. "You cannot—dig into this, Kate, I cannot be the person who outed this to _the _Nikki Heat!"

"Why do you have this stuff bookmarked, Alex? Why do you have tabs open to tags like—'Pokemon AU' and 'Everyone Is Poly Because Black Heat'?"

"It's research! For the dissertation!" Alexis backpedaled, even as Kate held still. "It's really interesting, how Nikki Heat is based off you, and then people base these stories off Nikki Heat—like how Fifty Shades of Gray was based on Twilight? I wanted to get my essay done before I left, _then _ask you a few questions—very carefully chosen questions—so that people could see all the differences between these incarnations of, of _you!"_

"Well, I certainly haven't ever had anal sex, 'Nikki Heat Is An Anal Slut' tag to the contrary."

"They don't mean anything by it!" Alexis protested, hitting the wall ass-first. "It's not, it's not _you, _it's Nikki Heat, their vision of Nikki Heat. And it's beautiful, really—they use my father's work as a jumping off point, and they tell these stories that are funny and scary and sexy—"

"Does Castle know about this?"

"He, uh…" Alexis bit her lip. "He has a tumblr account and sometimes he reblogs stuff _but he doesn't want his headcanon Nikki Heat to be invalidated so he really doesn't interact much with the fandom._"

"So he knows."

"He gave me the idea," Alexis admitted.

"Wait, tumblr?" Kate's hands tightened on the bedspread under her. "I went to the Nilla tag. They have pictures of me—of _me, _Alexis… and I'm Photoshopped to look like I'm—"

"That's just a few hardcore fans!" Alexis insisted. "You're their Nikki Heat face-claim, but that's _just them, _everyone else agrees that you're off-limits and… most of them think Scarlett Johansson should play you, actually."

Kate raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's flattering. And it explains the gifs from Under The Skin."

Alexis forgot herself. "Yeah, when that hit Blu-Ray, everyone got really pumped because Eva Green _is _Belle St. Clair and she gets naked all the time, so people use that in their gif sets, but they didn't have anything to use it with because ScarJo never did nudity until that movie, so Fuckyeahpervyfangirls made this really great manip—"

"People think my sex life is Scarlett Johansson and Eva Green boning?" Kate asked in sheer disbelief.

"Not _you, _Nikki Heat. _Fuck, _why do I have to do this before coffee?" Groaning in frustration, Alexis set down her laptop. "Look, it's not a reflection on you, it's not people stalking you, okay, I promise you—I've talked to them. Really, you barely come up. People just use you for a few headcanons and maybe an avatar here and there."

"If it's not that bad, why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't want you to freak out!"

"Freak out?" Kate stood. "I've got a couple thousand people fantasizing about me having lesbian sex. It's like being a pop star in China and _not knowing it._"

"Kate, you would not believe the hope and the inspiration that Nikki Heat—_this _Nikki Heat—brings to the fans. She's not a porn star, there are, like, seven hundred _thousand _word fics about her solving cases with Bella or running a coffee shop or fixing cars, and the thought that it has some basis in truth… there are people it really means a lot to. Gay kids in bad places who get by thinking that someday, they could have that. That they could be as strong as you."

"So now I'm a gay icon." Kate leaned against the wall. "Holy hell."

Her lip compressed between her teeth so hard that discolor marched down Alexis's mouth, the redhead scooted over to the wall and hunched before Kate. "Listen. Please, just forgot all about this. Don't try to stop it or censor it or tell people how awful they are. They've been really good about not intruding on your privacy or creeping on you and—if you're angry, take it out on me. I'm as bad as the rest of them. Trying to get an A out of it."

Kate blinked a couple times before rubbing at her tired eyes. "So it's harmless?"

"Absolutely harmless. I promise. A lot of them actually make an effort to support the charities you endorse; their way of giving back to you for giving them Nikki Heat."

"Well, that's something at least." Kate full-on ground her hand into her eye. "Why is all of it about sex, though?"

"It's not _all _sex."

"I read it, Alexis. Fourteen stories—'alternate universes,' or whatever—and every story, Nikki meets Bella, they banter for not ten minutes, and then I'm bent over a table. How easy do they think I am?"

Now Alexis colored the other way. "Well, uh—was it AFF?"

"AFF?"

"Adult Fan Fiction dot net. It's an archive for… adult-themed fics. They split off from Fanfiction Dot Net proper when they banned po—adult-themed fics."

"So there's so much pornography about me that it gets its own separate website from the stories that are just about me in high school. Great. When it comes to porn, there's me and then there's Lisa Ann."

"Hey, c'mon…" Alexis tried to laugh it off. "It's not all _that _badly written."

"I never said it was badly written. I just said it's ridiculous how fast Nikki and Bella fall into bed. They may be gay, but they're gay _women. _Not dudes. At least, except in a few stories."

"Oh, did you read A Department Divided by Mary-Lou?" Alexis asked brightly. "That's a classic. It has fan art like—somebody cut together a fake movie trailer where Daniel Craig is Nick Heat and Benedict Cumberbatch is Bill St. Clair…"

"Nice," Kate said sardonically. "Real nice. Is there just a _religion _devoted to me or does this madness have an end?"

Alex had seen enough arguments between Kate and her father to know that kind of sarcasm presaged acceptance. She reached out and patted Kate on the shoulder.

"At least you're not in an anime?"

* * *

Alexis flew back to Harvard and Kate went back to the NYPD, both promising to keep in touch with Skype and Gchat.

That went wrong almost immediately.

DetecBeckett: You know, I always wondered why it was so hard to get a screen name out of my own name. Is it because of all my millions of adoring fans?

LilKaylee616: Pretty much.

DetecBeckett: So what's new in fandom? Seen any good fanfictions lately?

LilKaylee616: It's fanfics, Grandma. No one calls them fanfictions.

DetecBeckett: Touchy. Anyway, you were right. Some of them are pretty well-written. Shame no one leaves comments.

LilKaylee616: Oh no.

DetecBeckett: Wut?

LilKaylee616: Tell me you are not reading more fanfic?

DetecBeckett: It's fine, I got myself a pseudonym. On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

LilKaylee616:

LilKaylee616:

LilKaylee616:

DetecBeckett: I promise, I'm just leaving some nice messages for people whose work is unappreciated. Like how they support the families of policemen who were killed in the line of duty with my charity. They scratch my back…

DetecBeckett: Although, some people have the *strangest* idea how a police department is run.

DetecBeckett: AS IF Bella and Nikki could get away with having sex in the evidence lock-up.

LilKaylee616: OMG

DetecBeckett: And I don't know why kind of showers they think we have in the locker room. Pebbled glass? MASSAGING SHOWERHEADS?

LilKaylee616: *gif failed to load please retry server*

LilKaylee616: That was supposed to be a scene from Jurassic Park telling you what a bad idea what you're doing is.

DetecBeckett: I think Bitebugbite is a guy. Is it just me? All their Nilla fanfic is about one of us having a dick. Something's going on there.

LilKaylee616: She's just from Glee fandom, forget it.

DetecBeckett: And what's this Rookie Blue show? I've never heard of it, but there's an entire Livejournal with crossovers where me and Bella have foursomes with Canadian actresses.

LilKaylee616: DO NOT WAAAAAAAAANT

DetecBeckett: And who's Alicia Rook? She's in so many fanfics but I've never seen her in the novels. Is she from Rookie Blue too?

LilKaylee616: *connection lost*

* * *

Kate was on lunch break, reading Paramour Kisses by Fuckyeahlaymon on her Kindle when she figured out who Alicia Rook was. She called Alexis right away. The cars on the street outside the little deli she was eating at it seemed to race by at an appropriate speed for the conversation.

"Alicia Rook is _you._"

"Oh my god, she is not," Alexis replied shrilly.

"Jameson Rook's daughter, who isn't in the books, but has red hair and baby fat—"

"I don't have baby fat!"

"In a good way. And she has _threesomes _with Nikki and Bella—"

"It's complicated!"

"I'm telling your father. He needs to get some lawyers on this, this is—stalking, or slander, or child pornography—"

"Kate, _stop. Calm down._"

Kate switched her cell phone to her other ear before she smashed it in her current hand. "How am I supposed to calm down? It's one thing to sexualize me, I'm a grown woman, you're—"

"Also a grown woman," Alexis interrupted her with a fierce intake of breath. "Listen. This is back before the Bella Trilogy even came out. Nikki Heat fandom was really small—it was practically the Wild West. But there were some magazine articles about my dad that I participated in, and some interviews I did with the school paper and stuff—and maybe one or two photo shoots that were very fun. And people liked how I looked and how I acted, so someone wrote a story where, since Jameson Rook is based on my dad, he finds out he has a long-lost teenage daughter and she comes to New York and lives with him and Nikki…"

Kate pounded her fist on her knee. Goddamn kids. All the selfies and drugs and internet roman a clefs, they thought it was harmless, then they ended up dead in a ditch somewhere. "That's one thing. This is…" She cupped the mouthpiece in her hands. "There was double penetration, Alex. Alicia was crying and…"

"Were there warnings?"

"Yes, I thought it just meant Nikki and Bella would—"

"Did you look at the warnings closely? Because our fandom's pretty good about content warnings."

"_That's not the point._"

"It _is _the point. Okay, you can't judge the entire fandom on this one ship. This Alicia Rook character, she's an OC; she caught on with people, she took on a life of her own. Someone said she should look like Meghan Ory."

"Who?"

"Doesn't matter. She's cute. Don't worry about it. The point is, it was a bunch of angsty teenage girls who wanted Jameson Rook and Nikki Heat to be their parents. That's all it was. And then the Bella Trilogy happened, and a lot of femslashers entered the fandom, and they read the old fics and someone got the idea that—there was a fic where Jameson Rook got killed, so his daughter got adopted by Nikki and Bella. That was, like, a subgenre. I could name ten stories like that. It's wish fulfillment. Didn't you ever dream that Batman or someone was your real daddy?"

"I didn't fuck Batman after he signed the adoption papers." She'd said that a bit loud. The guy at the deli counter was staring. Kate stared right back.

"I'm just saying, it's not like someone woke up one morning and wanted to write a story about _me, _Alexis Castle, having sex. It's a hurt/comfort fantasy cliché thing that developed and developed and now these teenage girls who are discovering their sexuality, they have this fantasy about… being me and being initiated into adulthood by these women who mean so much to them and who they find so attractive. It's actually pretty flattering."

"Getting fucked in the ass by a lesbian is a teenage fantasy now?" Deli counter guy was staring at her again. Kate flashed him her badge.

"For some people? Yeah. I mean, it's not so bad a prospect, is it really? Some girl who's young and… inexperienced, coming to you, wanting you to do stuff. And maybe she doesn't know what that stuff is, but she trusts you. To make her feel good. To take care of her." Alex's breath hit the mouthpiece, blaring over the line. "Listen, I've got to go, I have class. Promise me you're not gonna call the FBI or anything?"

"If I call anyone, it'll be the National Guard."

"Love you too," Alexis replied, and hung up.

Kate dropped her phone on the table. "Wonderful."


	3. Chapter 3

Kate came around a little on the Alicia Rook issue, though she still assiduously avoided fanfics that paired her with anyone and seriously considered posting a rant against Alicia Rook sex scenes in the tumblr she'd created to rec particularly good Nilla fanfics. It was funny. She'd held back on the Nikki Heat novels because of how long it took her to get through them when police work took up so much of her time, but with the bite-sized fanfics that she could finish in an hour at most, she ended up reading more than she would with a paperback.

Kate and Alexis grew closer in the following months as well. Almost once a week, Kate and Alexis would Skype together to discuss the happenings in fandom and collaborate on Alexis's dissertation. As well-mannered as Nikki Heat fandom was, it could be as contentious as any gathering of passionate people. Especially when a preview of the next Richard Castle book was released, and it appeared Nikki was being tempted to cheat on Bella with a male suitor.

That was when Kate started lying to Alexis.

She lied to herself as well. She told herself Alex didn't want to know the specifics of her foray into fandom. That this was something special to Alex, and that if Kate shared the depth of her own involvement with Alexis, then the young woman would no longer have so much fun showing off and detailing the wild world of fandom to her clueless friend. And so Kate plead ignorance when Alexis told her what was going on, who was writing what, what ships were at war with which ships. She pretended the jargon Alex fluently spoke to impress had not become a second language.

One week, Alexis mentioned that her spring break would unfortunately overlap with her father going on a book tour. For once, she wouldn't be able to spend her holiday with him.

All Kate had to do was float the possibility of Alexis crashing at her place and the plane ticket was bought. Kate got a nice, warm vibe off Alexis coming to meet her. She didn't miss Castle, not really, but life wasn't quite as fun without him there to drag her into this misadventure or that. Investigations seemed so much more ordinary, somehow. She wanted someone to get excited for her, and Alexis—Alexis called her from the _plane _just to chat.

Unfortunately, an interrogation ran long—Kate had to sweat the perp for four hours before he gave them anything, so there was no way to pick Alexis up from the airport. All she could do was send an apologetic text, promise to pay for the taxi, and tell Alex about the key under the welcome mat. She'd never hear the end of that.

Finally, she got loose from writing up the entire sordid investigation, handed it off to Ryan and Esposito, and drove home. Already tempting herself with the thought of a hot bath and a pint of ice cream that would not count at all if she split it with Alex, she swept through her front door, shrugged off her leather jacket, and collapsed into the nearest chair. Her collapse-chair.

She needed to find a new line of work. Maybe mall security was hiring.

Where was Alexis anyway? There were her bags by the door, but the redhead herself was gone. _That _was odd. Hadn't she heard Kate come in? Kicking off her shoes, Kate pulled herself up and walked through the apartment. No Alexis in the living room, the kitchen, the guest room, the bathroom. Finally, the only thing left was the bedroom. Seemed an odd place for Alex to put herself. Kate pushed open the door and the first thing she saw was the dildo on the bed.

Then the open laptop.

Then Alexis.

"I'm sorry," Alexis said in a paralyzed monotone, "I was just moving my things into the guest room, and I opened up a drawer, and—I thought you'd want it back. So I went into your room, and there was your laptop and you looked at mine, so I just wanted to check yours and you, uh… I didn't know you wrote Nilla."

Kate was frozen just as solid. "I thought I'd try my hand at it. Seemed funny. Like someone would attack me for not getting Nikki Heat and then I _am_… Nikki Heat. But people liked it. So I wrote another. And people liked that…"

"You read Alicia Rook stories."

Kate blinked. It seemed rare. "Yes."

"You _wrote _Alicia Rook stories. You started a separate account _I didn't know about _and you used it for Alicia Rook stories. Where she's… where Nikki and Bella and her…"

"I didn't want you to know because I didn't want you to take it the wrong way," Kate insisted. "I didn't _like _feeling like a tightass, so I read a few, just to give them a chance. And I saw how powerful a fantasy it was. I remembered being young—falling for older women—nothing happened, but if it had, I would've wanted it to be like that. And the more… _honest _I was about my fantasies, the more I had to write."

"Alicia Rook with a dildo up her ass," Alexis breathed. "That's what you fantasize about?"

"It's not you—"

"I thought—" Alexis's voice was hoarse. "That you _hated it. _You said it was shameful and degrading and perverted."

"I didn't know—"

"The notion of _me _having sex, the thought of someone fucking _me, _it was so far from your mind that you thought only a pervert could think that—"

"You're not Alicia Rook."

"To you I am!" Alexis grabbed the dildo and stood, brandishing it like a weapon. "You don't write her like anyone else. You write her like me. She talks like me, she looks like me—does she fuck like me?"

Kate's jaw twitched. "It's just a fantasy. You said it yourself, it's just a fantasy."

"Is that what the dildo's for? Reality? Verisimilitude? Do you get your ideas for fucking little Alicia Rook while you have that in your cunt?" Alexis's eyes burned. "Or in your ass?"

Kate let her lips purse, once, before she set them. "Are you going to stand there and pretend those stories you were looking up were _research_?" Her eyes flickered to the dildo. "Or that you don't have something just like that back in your dorm? Don't act so surprised, Castle."

Alexis shook her head. "It doesn't surprise me that you have a dildo. What surprises me is it being a double-header. Do you fuck other women, Kate? Are they young? Are they ginger? Do you pretend they're me?"

There was only so much red you could wave in front of a bull before the bull saw it. In one charge, Kate was in Alexis's face. "No. When I put that thing in my cunt, I pretend it's you fucking me. And I come like a bomb going off."

They could've kissed. They didn't. Kate shoved Alexis down on the bed and the dildo slipped from her fingers and her skirt flew up her legs and her breasts bounced inside their bra. It turned Kate on so hard that her breath left her. She didn't breathe as she dropped over Alexis, mounting her on the bed. Alex, on the other hand, couldn't be breathing harder as Kate's eyes swam up her body.

"Wanna see more?" she asked, suddenly as eager as a puppy dog shown a new toy.

Kate nodded, her teeth grinding together.

"Like my pussy? Would that do?" Alexis wound her panties down her thighs, the shadow of her lifted skirt barely censoring her. Kate could've drooled at even the obscuring of that sweet mound—the soft slope sheathed in flaxen pubic hair, the indentation of her labia more like an invitation than a part of her body. Kate reached out to touch, to have…

Alexis rolled away, laughing now at the root of the bed. "Or do you wanna see my boooobs?" She drew the word out self-deprecatingly, laughed as she pulled her blouse over her head and snapped off her bra as she lowered her hands. Her breasts were small, but went with the rest of her body. There didn't seem to be an ounce of excess anywhere on her. She'd become a sort of ascetic in reaction to her father's libertine ways. Beckett felt a fierce kinship with her.

She covered it with a taunt and a closing of her arms over her chest. "Alright if I touch you now, or would you like me to stare at your ass too?"

"Actually—" Alexis smoothed her skirt over her pantyless crotch. "I'd like to see what you've got, Detective Beckett."

Kate gave some thought to giving Alexis a show, doing a little dance, but a girl didn't get a crush on a policewoman hoping she'd turn into a stripper. She undressed curtly, efficiently, and stood over Alexis with her hands on her hips and her scowl distinctly unimpressed, the picture of a butch power dome.

"_Fuck, _you have great tits," Alexis burst out, seeing Kate naked.

Kate gave her hips a swing as she took one last step toward the bed. "How can you say that when you haven't even felt them?"

For a moment, Alex was gobsmacked. Then she threw her hands onto Kate's breasts like suction cups, squeezing them, pushing them together, then burying her face in them, howling into Kate's cleavage like a Beatles fan. Kate didn't mind. She wound her arms around Alex, snaking her fingers down to squeeze Alexis's buttocks. When Alex hummed appreciatively, Kate went further. As Alex kissed the very breasts she was kneading in her hands, Kate felt between her cheeks to the creamy little slit of her sex.

Alexis gasped explosively, turning Kate's cleavage into an echo chamber. Now unable even to beg for Kate's attentions, she threw herself back onto the mattress, pulling Kate with her so they landed in each other's arms, her small breasts against Kate's larger ones, her petite body against Kate's taller, stronger form. The only thing they seemed to have in common was below the waist. Both their pussies were wet as they rubbed together.

"Oh shit! That feels so good!" Alexis huffed out, her face already turning pink as she desperately ground herself up against Kate, her legs wide open and receptive.

"That it does," Kate said coolly, enjoying Alex's spirited but unskilled efforts while not finding it quite the revelation that her younger lover did.

"Don't stop! Don't move!" Alexis's whole body was flying up to rebound off Kate. Her eyes squeezed tightly shut. "I think I'm gonna, gonna, GONNA—"

Alexis's pussy was on fire, sensitive to every shaft of light, every mote of dust, every particle of air. Every curve of Kate's body pressed against her own. She breathed hard and fast and erratic as she clung to Kate's body, an engine trying to turn over. Kate kissed her and something inside her caught, clenched, turned into a breathy string of '_oh's _that bubbled up from her straining throat.

When Alexis went limp, Kate took the opportunity to give her a long, _proper _kiss. One that lasted almost two minutes, the girl just lying under her and giving into Kate's slow lovemaking. Then Kate rolled off her. The detective had to remind herself that Alexis had gotten swept up in this, might be feeling pressured, uncertain. Kate would give her a minute to regroup. Then she'd fuck her brains out.

"You came, right?" Kate asked, intentionally trying to seem blasé. The casualness of the question helped make it a lot easier to answer for the virginal Alex.

"Yeah," Alexis blushed. The extent of her arousal—how her body had just keened to Kate, exploded from touching her like a stick of dynamite thrown into a fire—it embarrassed her. She had never come so fast before, but at the same time, she had never come _so fast. _Alex didn't know how to feel about it.

"First time with someone else?"

Alex nodded briskly. "Sometimes, I felt myself get close, when I was making out with one of my boyfriends, but it never—"

"Alexis, are you a virgin?"

Alex almost rolled away from Kate, but the motion arrested itself so she just looked away, like she was getting comfortable. "Maybe…?"

"Do you want to be?"

All Kate could see was the back of Alexis's head. Her strawberry hair stirred with the air conditioner coming on.

Kate reached down and touched Alex's thigh. It was soft and warm, the dewy hairs there making it seem far more delicate than it was. "Alex…"

"How would you do it?" Alexis asked, the muscles in her leg twitching, turning, spreading just one degree.

"I wouldn't use fingers or tongues. I've read your stories. I know that's not what you want." Kate reached over to the dildo, still lying on the bed, barely moved. It had rings for a harness that she kept in her nightstand. It could be worn so some of the dildo went into one woman and the rest went into the other. "I'll use this."

Alexis was silent.

"Did you think about that, when you found it? When you picked it up? Did you picture me using it on someone? On you?"

Alexis turned to her, hair exploding with the sudden motion. "Do it."

Kate gave her a brief kiss, one meant to be over quickly. She didn't want to come off as patronizing. Then she opened up the drawer, finding the elastic belts in the miasma of condoms and old paperbacks and one surprisingly tiny vibrator. She clipped them onto the dildo and rolled the belts up her legs like stockings, fastening them at her hips. Alexis watched closely, chewing on a fingernail, her jaw dropping when Kate sunk four inches of the dildo into herself without a care. Tightened the belts. The rest of the dildo, maybe six inches, maybe seven, Kate intended for Alexis.

"It's gonna hurt," Alexis said with strained calm, smart enough not to make it a question.

"Yes. But I'll be careful. I'll only let it hurt a little, at the beginning. Then it'll start to feel better. I won't have to be as careful. I'll make it feel nicer and nicer until… well. You've read the PWPs." Kate reached into the nightstand again, finding a half-empty tube of lubricant and using it up. First slickening her dildo from hilt to tip, then massaging it into Alexis.

The redhead jumped when Kate started to touch her, but she smiled when she realized they hadn't quite started yet. She was plainly apprehensive. While still not wanting to coddle her, Kate kissed her reassuringly. Alexis was quicker to respond to her fingers with a tongue in her mouth.

"Put it in," Alexis gasped hollowly when Kate moved on to kissing her neck. "_Put it in, put it in, put it in_—"

Kate took Alex's hand as she continued kissing her, interlacing their fingers, squeezing it warmly. Letting Alex feel warmth and pressure for just a moment before the butch act had to keep going. Then she brought Alex's hand down to the dildo jutting from her groin.

Alexis had chosen well. Maybe it was her plan. Though long, the model was relatively slender and very smooth, with none of the accoutrements that might be difficult for Kate to explain. Kate let Alexis feel its weight, its heft, how slippery it was with lubricant. She encouraged Alex to jack her fingers over its length, shifting it minutely inside the detective. It felt nice. If Kate were looking for nice, she would've been very satisfied.

Instead, Kate stopped simply rubbing the lube into Alexis's genitals. She penetrated Alex, one finger, then two in rapid succession. She was easily able to find the small patch of texture that indicated the G-spot, and her other hand found Alex's clit even easier. She rubbed Alex inside and out.

Alex seemed to have a seizure. She keened and thrashed, crying out continuously as her hand flew over Kate's artificial strap-on. By the time Kate judged her significantly undone, relaxed and loosened, Alexis was melting in depletion.

Kate got up from the bed, leaving Alexis lying there with eyes closed and breaths coming deep. She stood over Alex. She waited for her to come to. The dildo hung from her, an artificial cock with a permanent erection. Kate squeezed the dregs out of the tube of lubricant and spread it lovingly over her cock. It was time.

Alexis opened her eyes, focusing on the dildo with preternatural interest. "It looks so big…"

"It's not," Kate assures her. "Not compared to you. When you're aroused, the way you are, you can take a lot more than you'd think. I'll go in nice and easy. I'll play with you while I'm doing it. It's going to feel wonderful. You'll see."

Kate lowered herself onto Alexis with a deep kiss, her slick cock rubbing against Alex's freckled thigh. Kate whispered reassurances with her kisses and strokes of Alexis's ripe body. "You'll see… you'll see…"

Alex put her arms around Kate, fisting her hands in Kate's hair. "Show me."

Kate reached down, letting her fingers flow over Alexis's body as they went, before gripping the narrow head of the dildo. She put it to Alex's opening, felt Alexis's hips flinch in response. Kate gave her another comforting kiss. Then she pushed.

"How's it feel?" she asked, feeling Alex's body start to resist her.

"Funny…" Alexis trailed off. "But not bad," she added.

Kate pushed a little harder, trying to lodge the cockhead inside Alex without hurting her too much.

Alexis's lips were pinched together.

"Does it hurt now?" Kate asked.

Alexis nodded.

"It has to, baby. I'm sorry." One more kiss of Alex's lips, like Kate was snatching more and more candy from a dish. "Just relax… relax… It's me. I'm not going to hurt you. You know I won't hurt you…"

Tears turned Alex's bright blue eyes liquid, but she nodded, frantically believing in Kate.

"I'm going inside you now, Alex. It'll hurt for a moment, but then it'll feel so good. You're love having me in you."

Kate kissed Alexis as she took her virginity.

Alex tore her mouth away, howling, trying to squirm away from her impalement. She hadn't been ready—she just hadn't been ready for how it would hurt and how good it would feel, all at once, the skill Kate had plied her with to turn some of her pain into pleasure. Yet she could feel the trickle of blood between her thighs, _knew _how irrevocable this was. Guilt sprung up in her: how she had jumped Kate, how she hadn't even dated her, didn't know her favorite food, that this woman could've been her _stepmother _in another life. And none of that mattered. The pain faded. The pleasure continued to grow.

Kate held Alexis as she sobbed, a few fat tears squeezed from her tightly closed eyes. She kissed the girl gently, petted her body, but did not move the dildo an inch. The territory it had won was hers. On some primal level, Kate could not consider relinquishing it. She was as aroused as Alexis—it felt to her like she actually _was _inside the redhead, feeling the warmth of Alex's needing hold on her. It was shockingly arousing.

They were connected now, body to body, pleasure to pleasure. Both women looked down in wonder at their sex, breached by the end of the dildo whose shaft led inevitably to another woman's pussy, stretched in exactly the same manner.

"Is it okay?" Kate asked, her own breath a little short as she gave Alexis one more kiss. "Is it okay?"

"Yes. Yes, please. It's okay. Please."

And Kate moved her hips in a slow circle, twisting the dildo inside Alexis like a living thing. Alexis's mouth opened in a long, silent moan, her jaw wobbling, her tongue unfurling, but nothing coming out. She trembled, and it became spasms as Kate rotated herself again, the dildo pressing where no fingers had ever been. And Alex's enjoyment, her vibrations, coursed through the silicone toy that joined them and tickled inside Kate like the tongue of a small kiss.

Soon they were both grinding away at each other, fucking only as hard as they took what they were given. The dildo slammed into Alexis, into Kate, into Alexis, as the detective loosened the straps holding it in place to let the girl fuck her. Their bodies met: lips, breasts, bellies, and finally groins, the shaft buried between the wet lips of their touching cunts.

They never stopped, never slowed. Alex kissed her mentor repeatedly, as if giving a recitation she hoped would meet with approval, and Kate flagrantly gave it. Their hands traveled each other's bodies, but finally settled on their lover's waists, to keep each other close and pull them closer. Kate laughed as her ample breasts swamped Alex's, feeling the girl's nipples prick her flesh deliciously. She kissed Alex even more, wishing she had eaten the girl out before so she could taste her own deliciousness on Kate's tongue. And she tried to ignore the mounting pressure in her groin, the impending orgasm that she wouldn't let have her before she gave Alexis her due.

Their pussies sealed together, impaled on the same spike, fueling the wildness above them even as the reaming of almost a foot of hardened dildo proved secondary to the soul kissing embrace that consumed the two women.

Alexis came repeatedly, her breath pounding against Kate's clavicle as the older woman guided her through each orgasm. They still hurt, at first, a bittersweetness that compared unfavorably to Alexis's masturbation. But the pain dwindled to nothing under Kate's steady attentions, kissing Alexis, stroking her, her touches half soothing and half groping. Finally Alexis felt nothing, absolutely nothing but pleasure and she was screaming into Kate's flesh and when she was at all conscious of her situation, her only thought was to share her ecstasy with her lover.

Her hand skirted Kate's back, found the buoyant ass she had already cupped so many times. But now, fingers wet with the lube that was by now smeared everywhere, she dug her finger into Kate's ass.

For Kate, her sudden orgasm felt like some great and terrible creature had surfaced within her, a monster of an climax, ravenous and catastrophically destructive. Her body—all her sensations, her emotions, her sight and hearing and touch, they were all crushed into her cunt as it clenched down on the dildo Alexis was stabbing into it. And Kate could've sworn she felt it give.

Eternal minutes later, she opened her tightly clenched eyes to see Alexis under her, panting with the strains of her own finish. Kate watched her closely as she drew the dildo out a little at a time; a few inches from herself, then a few inches from Alex. The girl was wracked with delight, but far too satisfied and comfortable for another go. Kate could sympathize. She dropped down beside Alexis, the dildo between them, its entire length proudly wet.

"Not bad for a first-timer," Kate drawled. "You might just have a future in this."

Alexis giggled, unable to keep up Kate's pretense. Then she calmed. "Was it okay—with my finger?"

"Oh, yeah. A little warning next time, but… better than I would've expected."

"So you really haven't done it before? In your butt?"

Kate rolled her eyes. "It hasn't really come up. Who do you think I date, anyway?"

Alexis shrugged helplessly. "Me?"

Kate levered herself up to her feet, granting Alex a display of what had to be the finest ass in the Five Boroughs. "I'm getting us some wine. You should have wine when you lose your virginity. It's a rule."

Alexis lifted her head to watch Kate's passage into the next room, then dropped it back down to the tangled sheets under her. "Okay."

Kate was trying to play it off like she'd merely tolerated having her backdoor opened, but Alex hadn't been too far gone not to see how she'd come like a wild woman with her ass fingered. And though Alex was no Heatmiserx93, she'd written a few fics, just so her encyclopedic knowledge of _the real _Nikki Heat didn't go to waste.

And seeing Kate's reaction, along with the look of some of her other dildos, Alex had an idea for a _great _story.


End file.
